Abstract
Assessment of intrasexual competition has largely relied on Intrasexual Competition Scale (ICS; Buunk & Fisher Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 7:37–48, 2009). Based on recent developments in mating psychology and the notion that humans use multiple tactics to compete with same-sex individuals, we propose a new theory-driven assessment strategy for intrasexual rivalry in men and women. Here, we develop and initially validate the 16-item Intrasexual Rivalry Scale (IRS). Eight items represented self-promoting tactics in four mating areas and eight items represented rival-derogatory tactics in the same mating areas. We pre-registered our study design and statistical strategy and recruited a community sample in a non-Western culture, Iran. Consistent with our theoretical expectation, exploratory factor analysis (N = 211) clearly suggested extraction of two distinct factors (self-promotion and rival-derogation). Results suggested that scores on the ICS are strongly correlated with rival-derogation, but only weakly associated with self-promotion. Findings are explained in the light of evolutionary psychological perspective and future directions with the newly developed scale are outlined.
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Notes
Rivalry and competition have been used in the literature interchangeably, but we chose to use “rivalry” specifically for two reasons. First, it can differentiate our measurement strategy from the widely used scale by Buunk and Fisher (2009). Second, the definitions of rivalry and rival (i.e., “the word rival most commonly refers to a person or group that tries to defeat or be more successful than another person or group”; https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rivalry) are conceptually closer to our theoretical perspective indicating that there are both promotive and derogatory tactics among same-sex individuals.
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The authors would like to thank Mohammad Atari for valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
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Karimi-Malekabadi, F., Ghanbarian, E., Afhami, R. et al. Theory-Driven Assessment of Intrasexual Rivalry. Evolutionary Psychological Science 5, 286–293 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-018-00185-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-018-00185-7